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01 April 2012 By Saeed Qureshi
Our beloved country
Pakistan reels under a civic system that is out of
sync with the imperatives of a modern society. It is
decrepit and utterly inadequate to provide decent,
modest and worthwhile living environment to the people
of Pakistan. The roads and highways network is not
enough to cater for fast growing movement of both
travelers and freight. Travelling between the cities
and within the cities in Pakistan is hazardous, slow,
and unsafe.
Unlike western societies,
Pakistan at first glance looks primitive, dirty and
disorganized. From traffic to business activities
nothing seems to be without sleaze and impropriety.
Despite our society being deeply religious and people
with total religious orientation, ethical practices in
social dealings and human interaction are woefully
deficient. There is always a wide gap between what the
leaders profess and what they do.
Our social sector figures
lowest in our national priorities. The health,
education, transportation and other public related
services are moribund and woefully inadequate due to a
variety of factors including paucity of funds,
erroneous and faulty policies and planning and lack of
vision to make them universal, accessible, organized
and modern. The population is growing at an alarming
pace. We have ramshackle old frames and structures of
buses shorn of necessary facilities like air
conditioning, heating etc. Overloading of passengers
is common scene on Pakistani roads.
Social vices like bribery,
corruption, pilferage of government resources,
adulteration and selling of sub-standard commodities
and medicines, evasion of taxes and a host of other
odious crimes have always been rampant. Despite being
deeply religious people lack moral fiber.
There are no standardized
procedures for conduct and regulation of civic life.
Even if there are such procedures, no one bothers to
follow them in order to check the mal-practices and
violations in daily life such as encroachments,
violation of building rules, sanitation rules, and
maintenance of premises and public places.
Likewise traffic rules are
complicated, cumbersome, outdated and ignored by both
public and the concerned departments. Traffic in
Pakistan has ever been messy. The civic code is
outdated. The cities are brimming with filth, stench,
encroachments, horse and bullock driven carts. There
are no strict codes for raising new dwellings.
There is a mushroom,
unabated and unplanned growth of houses and
shantytowns in and around all the major cities in
Pakistan, choking and stultifying the already meager
and insufficient utilities. The water is rationed by
hours, the electric power goes off frequently, and the
voltage is low and unstable. There is no well-planned
or scientific method of removing garbage from the
lanes, roads, houses and public places in Pakistan.
Our railways is ramshackle,
mismanaged, is a relic of the past and starkly lacking
in the modern system of management as we find in the
railways of the developed societies. The railway
stations have deplorable and endemic problems such as
sanitation, non-provision of computerized
communication, operation system and utilities like air
conditioning, heating and reservation etc. There are
countless flaws in our railway system. Our railway is
in dire need of complete overhauling so as to make it
modern and efficient.
Same is the case with
other service providing organizations such as WAPDA,
PIA, customs, municipal and local bodies police,
courts and judicial system, postal, revenue and
taxation departments: to name a few. All these
organizations and departments are chronically infested
with corruption, mismanagement, inefficiency and other
flaws.
The Judiciary, Police,
bureaucracy and all other nation building institutions
that should serve the people in the fairest and the
freest manner have remained subservient to the
interests of the powerful local lords, wealthy
sections, aristocracy, robber barons, elitists
classes, bureaucracy, and the political mandarins.
The unavailability of
uniform, inexpensive and prompt justice, adulteration,
timely decision making, stealing of mail, counterfeit
stamp papers, usurping public land and property are
part of our morbid system that needs to a drastic
surgery and purged of its deformities, disabilities
and disorders. Expired and spurious drugs are sold
unhindered without any qualms of conscience or fear of
law. Hospitals lack the milk of human kindness and
lack proper facilities for the ever-increasing
patients. We sell adulterated food without any moral
prick and without any fear of legal or social
reprisals.
In order to bypass the
complicated, cumbersome, and unclear rules for
issuance of essential and ordinary documents such as
driving licenses, passports, identity cards the people
are forced offer to graft and bribes to the officials
or the touts. In short there is a complete moral,
institutional and organizational mess and mayhem in
the society.
Pakistan is to be liberated
from the clutches of feudal classes and privileged
families, rapacious mafia, pressure lobbies and
special interest groups that have held the state and
the society hostage since the inception of Pakistan.
These unassailable rogue entities and powerful
individuals do not allow Pakistan to function as a
liberal, free, democratic, modern, progressive and
prosperous country.
They hate the very concept
of a civil society in Pakistan. Civil society means
freedom of expression and unhindered observance of
faith, and un-curtailed movement and pursuit of
happiness in conformity with the human and fundamental
rights. These groups and entities are enemies of
progress and therefore of the people of Pakistan.
Pakistan is still far away
from having a democratic order that is unvarnished and
truly based on the popular vote and people's
aspirations. For most part of its existence Pakistan
was under the army rule, bureaucratic dispensation or
quasi-democratic system. Elections in Pakistan were
seldom free and fair. The National Assembly and Senate
assailed by the powerful classes would not function in
an independent manner and only serve the privileged
sections. There is no accountability at any stage in
bureaucracy and officialdom. Accountability in
Pakistan is used for vendetta against the political
contenders..
The leadership that was in
power all along has, thus far, miserably failed to
address and resolve the myriad socio -civic, economic,
political and even day to day problems of the people.
The hapless people of Pakistan have been waiting for
so long for a better time to come but it is now
foregone that the leadership in Pakistan is birds of
the same flock.
The leaders lack vision,
sincerity, seriousness and the will to transform
Pakistan into a modern, liberal and prosperous state.
With the abundance of natural resources, vast
productive land and industrious manpower that Pakistan
is endowed with, our country has the capability and
potential to stand shoulder to shoulder in the comity
of developed nations in a few years' span.
What therefore, needed is
to hand over power to such people who are
down-to-earth, who possess the vision, unshakable
will, absolute honesty and sincerity to bring about an
encompassing revolution for a glorious Pakistan as
well as for a vibrant and prosperous
civil society. Since the
political leadership in Pakistan has failed to provide
a stable democratic political system, there has been a
pervasive socio-civic and economic chaos that the
country is perennially suffering from.
With a crowd of political
parties already in the country it would look
superfluous to form another political entity for the
much needed watershed revolution in Pakistan and to
change it structurally from a primitive, backward,
poor, mismanaged to an institutionalized, orderly and
dignified modern nation. Yet without a dedicated and
visionary leadership the hope for a better, prosperous
and stable Pakistan would always remain dim. It means
that for making Pakistan a great country, it is
indispensable to change the leadership first.
After more than half a
century's governance, it is obvious that the
privileged and elitist classes that believe in running
the country via plutocracy, oligarchy or aristocracy,
are neither capable nor sincere in good governance.
The reason for their inability to earnestly serve the
nation and country is that they are not mindful of the
common man's problems nor are they interested in
ameliorating the plight of the citizens whose
predominant majority is suffering from bad
governance.
It is now incumbent that
the power should be exercised by the dispossessed
sections of the society. The common people understand
their problems well because they are affected by them.
But while the political power should now pass on to
the underprivileged or unprivileged, there must be a
team of such experts and men of excellence and vision
who should formulate policies and planning that can
put the country on the road to progress and prosperity
and inject order, discipline and social peace into our
ailing society and mode of governance.
In the light of the above
assessment one would wonder and it would rather be
pleasantly awesome if MQM and Imran Khan's Pakistan
Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) can join hands to save Pakistan
and steer this nation out of the dire straits of
ignorance, poverty, lawlessness, decadence, social and
moral vices, plunder of the privileges sections,
endemic corruption, gas and power load shedding. They
should restructure failed and dysfunctional
institutions departments and industries, renovate
Pakistan with a modern infrastructure and infuse life
into its ailing economy and stir a fresh hope about a
glorious future and a great destiny.
I mention MQM and PTI
because notwithstanding their shortcomings and, they
possess the grit and resolution to straighten the awry
situation in Pakistan. Their leaders are eminently
honest with committed cadres to get the things done.
The exemplary unity and strict discipline in the ranks
of MQM with a mission to root out feudalism, nepotism,
perfidious privileged mafias and similar abominations
is a boon and the indispensible tools to harness
Pakistan and reorder it rudder.
PTI is a new entrant into
the political arena of Pakistan. Their slogans and
manifestoes too are revolutionaries and their chief
and his associates are reputed for their patriotism
and clean hands. They possess the pain and a desire to
revolutionize Pakistan with radical transformation of
its rotten system from a Patwari to the running of the
state of Pakistan. They should get a chance to stem
the burgeoning rot in Pakistan. |
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